1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the field of medical surgical equipment. More particularly, the present invention relates to the field of safety devices for ensuring the safety of medical and dental surgeries and operations.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Modern development and advancement of medical surgical equipment and techniques often require a surgeon to perform a critical medical surgery, operation or procedure with a very high degree of precision under the microscopes or endoscopes. In many cases the surgery, operation or procedure is performed within a very limited and narrow field of operation, often at the millimeter level and does not allow the surgeon any opportunity to pay attention to his surroundings.
However, this high degree precision in a surgical process can be easily interrupted by an unintended, sudden movement of other persons or objects surrounding the surgeon. For example, a patient under light anesthesia may suddenly move or jerk in response to a pain. An anesthesiologist often has to check on the patient's airway or intravenous (IV) injection tube under the drape, which may also cause sudden movement of the patient or the operating table. Nurses or scrub technicians may inadvertently rest on the operating table during a long surgery process. Any operation room personnel may accidently bump the instruments, the surgeon, or the operating table.
All these and many other factors or events (such as an earthquake or other emergency situations) may result in a sudden movement of the patient's body, the surgeon, or the surgical equipment, which can have a devastating consequence because the magnitude of change is amplified significantly at the narrow operating field. Such sudden movement, for example, often causes temporary loss of visual sight under a microscope or endoscope and misalignment of the surgical equipment, which will then transform from an insulting instrument to an insulting weapon. Moreover, many modern surgical procedures now utilize laser, drills, electrocautery, or other insulting instruments which when misaligned or misapplied can cause irreversible injury. Surgical insulting instruments from here on refer to instruments that are used for operating on the patient.
Hence the combination of sudden movement, narrow operating field, and dangerous surgical insulting instruments have created a major hazard in the operation room and posted a real threat to the patient. However, currently there is no simple safety device available to address this problem. It is therefore desirable to provide a medical surgery safety device that can sense the sudden movement of the surroundings in an operation room and upon sensing such a sudden movement immediately cease the function of all surgical insulting instruments, so that no further damage can be done to a patient.
The concept of having an emergency disconnection of power that can be conveniently achieved is also an advantage in cases where the on/off switch location is difficult to reach or the on/off switch of the insulting instruments may malfunction. This concept can be applied to other dangerous machines in other fields such as meat cutting machine, table saw, or printing machine . . . etc. There are other applications for this product besides being used in the OR, including:                1. Monitoring an object or a person's movement to set off an alarm for security reasons.        2. If engineering is sophisticated enough with this device, one also track not only the movement of an object or person but also the direction and distance in which they are moving. This information is useful but has its limitations.        3. There can be a tilt mechanism attached to or built into various machines or games where rough movements by the operator is discouraged.        